Converting .exe into a readable source code.

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I have read about "Converting .exe into a readable source code".
Is it really true? It writes "Yes".
Now i am making an app to sell its source code on a marketplace, what stops buyers from turning my .exe app into a readable source code?
I mean, i show my app for free and they may buy its source code.
Can't they just turn it into a readable source code?
I look at sales and they buy, but can't they extract a source code?

I heard about .Net Reflector, people write it is possible to extract a source code out a .Net app, is it true?

And there are lots of other cases when the source code is kept seriously.
I am confused or it is not true?

Posted 7-Mar-15 2:09am

Ziya1995

Updated 14-Jun-22 2:07am

v6

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Subramanyam Shankar 7-Mar-15 8:42am

The .net reflector converts a dll to code .it's a reverse engineering of converting a dll assembly language to C# code. you idea will not work converting a .exe how come it will help end users. Converting a .dll to C# code helps deverlopers to understand the code.

Ziee-M 14-Feb-18 3:09am

I just wanted to add, All Microsft product have been hacked/reversed (VS, SQL...). So wherever you do, if your product is targeted, it will very probably be reversed and hacked. However, there is a lot of mature consumer, it will not affect you sales as much as you think. In addition, if you do regular updates, you will very probably discourage them since they have to do all the process from scratch, witch is not an easy task! I remember there is an article written by microsoft support about this topic and how they deal with it but i could not find it.

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-07T02:44:00

Yes and no. No, because you are totally confused, and, formally, the questions don't even make sense. You cannot say "conversion" and "extract source code". There is nothing to extract. Source code is not contained in the assembly modules. It is not "kept". You just don't understand.

At the same time, "turn it into a readable source code"? Yes, easily. Anyone can decompile a .NET assembly and get source code which can be compiled again into the same assembly. Readable? Yes. It is, of course, not the same source code, which is completely lost during compilation, but it is usually quite readable. Use open-source ILSpy and you will see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Reflector[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharpDevelop[^],
http://ilspy.net[^],
https://github.com/icsharpcode/ILSpy[^].

This is possible because the compiled assemblies are "written" in CIL (not machine language) and the code is reflective. Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_language[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Intermediate_Language[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_%28computer_programming%29[^],
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f7ykdhsy%28v=vs.110%29.aspx[^].

—SA

manchanx · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-07T04:54:00

In addition to what Sergey wrote and answers to the questions in your comment:

Quote:
You say .Net Assemblies, i say .Net Application, same thing?

.Net Assemblies are either Executables (.exe) or Dynamic Link Libraries (.dll) which are being used by Executables. Usually you refer to an Application as the whole product with all the parts that it requires to run, which includes .Net Assemblies.

Quote:
Ok, let's be simple, i made an app on C# .Net, and now i have .exe file i can use to run my whole app.
So, can anyone convert it into a readable source code, then customize it?

Theoretically yes. In practise it obviously requires effort and the question would be if someone would be sufficiently motivated to do that. Assuming you're talking about potential revenue losses when selling an application: Consider if someone who would hack your application would be a paying customer if he wasn't able to do that. Probably not. However, there are measures you can take to increase the amount of effort required to hack your .Net application: Obfuscators[^] will modify your application's assemblies in a way that it becomes considerably more difficult to make any sense of the source code that comes from decompiling, some even provide measures to make the decompiling process itself much harder.

Converting .exe into a readable source code.

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